It’s Oh So Quiet
As you follow your first solid lead on Jones to Niomh Island, you’re risking much more than you expect Cast * Janine De Luca * Tom De Luca * Paula Cohen * Morag Brown Plot Niomh Island You join Janine, Paula, Tom and Morag Brown, a resident of Mor, to search Niomh Island for Jones’s camp. Morag will guide you around the island, as she used to work at the bakery there. Maximal Speed Morag fills you in on Niomh Island’s past as a tourist haven, which led to its infection early in the outbreak. Laird Reid enforced a strict quarantine to protect the rest of the Far Hebrides. In light of the story, Paula notices something strange: there are no zombies visible anywhere. Over the Rooftops Tom spots the smoke, which is rising from a shack on top of a rooftop in the main town to the north-west. While Tom scouts, Janine asks Paula about how Sam is coping with the news that Frances is alive and on Dearg Island. He’s been sharing old stories of Alice with Maxine. Tom returns with a chilling report: he’s found all the zoms on the island, gathered in the centre of the island. They’re standing dormant - unmoving, silent. You decide to climb over the rooftops of the town to reach Jones’s hideout. Cat You climb across the rooftops as it begins to rain. Paula spots a cat, which takes a bite out of one of the zombies’ legs. Janine observes that the zombies are not triggered by simple movement, and must be waiting for some other stimulus. So long as you remain on the rooftops, you should be safe. Hideout Tom almost falls off the roof, but you are able to catch him. Janine recalls seeing zombies behaving similarly in the early days of the apocalypse. You arrive at Jones’ hideout. Waking Up There’s no sound coming from Jones’ shack. Janine investigates, and finds the shack empty. She enters, but the door has been booby trapped. A can of pebbles rolls out of the open door, down the roof, and falls into the crowd of zombies in the street below. The noise wakes them. S08E10 // Rofflenet Discussion regarding this mission can be found on Rofflenet Transcript JANINE DE LUCA: Yes, I see it, Tom. You were quite right. A thin line of smoke rising from the north of Niomh Island. All the Far Hebrideans say Niomh was abandoned early in the apocalypse. There’s a very good chance it’s Jones. MORAG BROWN: Good. The boy needs bringing to heel. TOM DE LUCA: I’m still not entirely convinced you should be accompanying us on this mission, Miss Brown. Jones is a dangerous man. MORAG BROWN: Ach, don’t be daft. I used to change Lachlan’s nappies when he was a wee bairn. I’ll not be afraid of a man whose backside I used to wipe. Besides, I’m the only person on Mor who spent time on Niomh. Worked in the bakery there before I set up my own. Could tell you some tales about the local folk that would make your hair curl! PAULA COHEN: laughs Yes. Maybe later. Janine, how are you feeling? JANINE DE LUCA: Stable, thank you, Dr. Cohen. I slept well last night for the first time in a while. PAULA COHEN: I’m still investigating what that medicine in the bottle you picked up on Dearg Island was, Five. I can observe with a microscope that it slows down nanite movement, but I don’t know why. MORAG BROWN: Aye. They’re a tight-lipped lot over on Dearg. TOM DE LUCA: Still, if it’s working, that trip wasn’t a waste of time. PAULA COHEN: By my calculations, it should buy Janine an extra couple of weeks at least. JANINE DE LUCA: So I might yet live to see Jones become king of the rocks! That’ll be a jolly time. TOM DE LUCA: You’ll live to see him captured and tried for his crimes! JANINE DE LUCA: That’s certainly the aim. MORAG BROWN: Bring the boat into the harbor here on the east of the island. With Lachlan’s camp on the other side, he won’t see us landing. splashes, boat is dragged across beach PAULA COHEN: All right. So we’re going to skirt the east of the island and then head toward that smoking using whatever cover we can find. We need to be quick and quiet. Five, take point. Let’s go. PAULA COHEN: What happened on this island, Morag? It looks really beautiful in a rugged sort of way. And I can see plenty of tourist stuff. Boards listing native species. A sign for deep sea fishing day trips over there. MORAG BROWN: Aye, it was. Niomh means beautiful, you know. Folk have always said this is the most bonny island of the Far Hebrides. They used to run yoga weekends here, writing retreats, that kind of nonsense. We had all sorts pitch up over the years, and not a scrap of common sense between them. PAULA COHEN: So… MORAG BROWN: Outsiders brought the plague with them. Anywhere with tourists was at risk in the early days. TOM DE LUCA: Wait. So there were zombies here? MORAG BROWN: Aye. The laird was strict about it. No one who was bitten got off Niomh. If you had a graze or a scratch, two weeks on ? Island, the one with the great cairn of stones, before you could come to Mor. People weren’t happy about it, but well, what could you do? The Reid’s always have ruled with a rod of iron. PAULA COHEN: That’s how communities survived, to be honest. So what happened to the zombies over here? MORAG BROWN: How do you mean? PAULA COHEN: I mean, I can’t see any zombies. Can you, Five? JANINE DE LUCA: We didn’t see any in the binoculars from the boat, either. So the question is where did they go? MORAG BROWN: Walked into the sea, maybe? JANINE DE LUCA: Hmm. Perhaps. We must conduct this mission with maximal speed. The sooner we get off this island, the better. Come along. Run. TOM DE LUCA: There! That’s it. Thin plume of smoke from the northwest. PAULA COHEN: I see it. It’s coming from a sort of shack perched on a rooftop. MORAG BROWN: That’s the main town, aye. Could be a bird watching hide out there. TOM DE LUCA: All right. Five, you keep watch for zoms from that stump. I’ll creep up to the crest of this hill to take a bearing across this town and work out a route so Jones isn’t alerted to us. across gravel JANINE DE LUCA: Dr. Cohen, how is Mr. Yao? PAULA COHEN: Sam? Uh, he’s… he’s been talking to Maxine a lot. JANINE DE LUCA: Because she also remembers Miss Dempsey, the previous Runner Five? PAULA COHEN: Yes. I never knew her. Nor did Tom. But Sam and Jody have been talking about her a lot. And Maxine. JANINE DE LUCA: She was… a genuinely exemplary operative. She was good with people. I… I was not good with people at that time. I regret I did not get to know her better. I wish I had more to say about her now. PAULA COHEN: You can just ask. When we get to talk to Frances. You don’t have to tell her about her sister. You can just ask. across gravel Wow! laughs That was quick, Tom. JANINE DE LUCA: What is it, Tom? Did Jones spot you? TOM DE LUCA: No. No Jones. But I found… all of the zoms. The center of the island is full of dormant zombies. They’re just… standing there, just staring, not moving, not making a noise. MORAG BROWN: Oh Lord! TOM DE LUCA: I’ve heard about them going dormant if there’s no food source, but I’ve never seen it before. JANINE DE LUCA: What a clever place for Jones to make his base. PAULA COHEN: How did he get past them? TOM DE LUCA: Climbing over the rooftops. Doesn’t matter. We’ll take him today. We stick to the plan. Run around the shore. There’s a point to the north where we can get to his hide across the rooftops. We have to be fast! No telling what might activate those zoms! PAULA COHEN: I didn’t think ordinary zombies could still horrify me! MORAG BROWN: It’s a terrible sight. They’re just standing there. How many? 100? 200? And what is that nasty noise they’re making? PAULA COHEN: Sounds like a low monotonous version of the moaning sound they make when they’re moving. Perhaps that’s their natural sound. JANINE DE LUCA: Their eyes are milk-white. TOM DE LUCA: I’ve never seen this before. Not in Algeria, not on the way. The rain’s falling on them and they’re just… standing there. meows PAULA COHEN: Look! Crap! There’s a cat. It’s going to wake them up! Or not. It’s just taken a bite out of that one’s leg in the red mac. Nothing! JANINE DE LUCA: Lucky for us. They’re evidently not triggered by simple movement. Presumably, they’re conserving energy waiting for human targets. TOM DE LUCA: So if we keep to the roofs, we’re safe. JANINE DE LUCA: At the very least, they cannot climb to reach us. Dr. Cohen, Miss Brown, remain here at the edge of town with binoculars. Stay on the radio and keep a careful eye out. Warn us if anything changes. MORAG BROWN: I’m more than happy keeping my distance from those monstrosities! JANINE DE LUCA: Five, Tom, you’re with me. Across the roof here, and then that run of buildings, then we’ll reassess. Quickly, please. Run! JANINE DE LUCA: Tom, watch out! TOM DE LUCA: Oh! Thanks, Five. If you hadn’t caught me, I would have fallen into the street right in front of the zoms. That’d wake them up, if anything would. Have you ever seen anything like this before, Janine? JANINE DE LUCA: Only once, a few months after the apocalypse. Scouting a department store for supplies. I crossed the roof to access an inner atrium with no view of the outside world. There were four glass elevators. TOM DE LUCA: Glass elevators filled with zoms? JANINE DE LUCA: Someone must have turned in each of those lifts, bitten the others. They’d fed on each other, and then, with no way out and with no prey in sight, they’d become dormant like this. Milky-eyed, not moving. I climbed down. When I passed directly in front of each lift, the zombies inside woke up. Their eyes went from white to clear again. They began growling, gnashing their jaws, trying to reach me. TOM DE LUCA: Do you think if the whole world were infected, this is what it would be like? Just animated corpses standing still, rained on? Growing mold. Food for cats. shudders You heard the report from Abel. The red fungus is on the rise again in coastal towns. No one knows why. They’re burning them as soon as they grow, but they’re coming back faster and faster! JANINE DE LUCA: Miss McShell has scoured her files for any hint of her lost memories. She’s more certain than ever that the missing part of the Edda concerns the fungus. It is vital we retrieve it from Jones. Five, the wooden struts in that building look secure. Let’s proceed along there, and we’ll arrive at Jones’ hideout. Go! PAULA COHEN: Five, Tom, Janine, I can see you. The roof you’re on is one level down from the next rooftop, where there’s the shack with smoke coming out of it. TOM DE LUCA: We can’t hear anything from it, Paula. No sounds of movement. Nothing but wind and rain. MORAG BROWN: Silly boy. Must have gone out and left the fire on. Oh, I remember that time Callum West fell asleep with a cigarette in his fingers and woke up to his whole house burning! Of course, he had been tiring himself out with those late-night visits to Widow Sturgeon, if you take my meaning? JANINE DE LUCA: Um, yes, perhaps we could keep comms chatter to a minimum? We must be ready for any eventuality. I’ll pull myself up onto this rooftop. PAULA COHEN: Wow, impressive chin-up. JANINE DE LUCA: It’s a sturdy shack, but the door has not been locked. It’s open a crack. Inside, I can see… wood brazier, burning down. I believe Jones is not in here. PAULA COHEN: If he’s not there, Janine, you could wait for me and Morag to come over. We’ll look through it all together. JANINE DE LUCA: No need for that. I can investigate the shack easily myself. We may have only found a subsidiary camp. I’ll push the door open. creaks open, glass clinks Ah, he left a booby trap! Five, grab that before - wails PAULA COHEN: You need to leave now. TOM DE LUCA: We need to stay very still. We need to see what the zombies do. They might - JANINE DE LUCA: Their eyes are turning clear. They’re waking up. growlCategory:Mission Category:Season Eight